Forbes reports that in a world filled with school closings and social isolation, gaming has surged: - Steam, the most popular digital PC gaming marketplace, reached new heights Sunday, drawing a record 20,313,451 concurrent users to the 16-year-old service, according to third-party database SteamDB

- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, released by Steam-owner Valve in 2012, seems to be the top beneficiary of the increased engagement, breaking it's all-time peak on Sunday with 1,023,2290 concurrent players, topping its previous peak last month by a million, which itself beat the record set in April 2016...

- Activision Blizzard's new free-to-play battle royale spinoff Call of Duty: Warzone, launched March 10 on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4, is also likely benefiting, drawing in a staggering 15 million in three days, besting the record 10 million in three days by last year's battle royale sensation Apex Legends.
Polygon adds: Gaming saw a 75% increase, week over week, in data usage this March, Verizon said. Video games are proving to be a popular way to pass the time during lockdown -- though we're also starting to see the strain this is placing on various networks and services... Recently, Nintendo experienced a nine-hour network outage. Over the weekend, Xbox Live also went down, preventing users from online play.

Gaming adjacent tools and services are also seeing a surge. As our sibling site The Verge reports, live streaming platform Twitch had a 10% jump in viewership. The popular communication app Discord, meanwhile, recently saw server outages that coincided days after it expanded its screen sharing limit for users.

The games that people are playing themselves are changing in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, too. Pokemon Go, for instance, has tweaked its mechanics to make it easier for people to play from home, while also changing its events to make it easier for people to play solo. And in an effort to entice its players to stay home, Rockstar vowed to add fun bonuses to the MMO for players who are "spending a little extra time at home." Elsewhere, game developers are starting to give out their games for free in an effort to help people stay indoors. It's no wonder we're seeing changes in usage, playtime, and outages across the board.

As if there weren't enough doom in the world right now, this week sees the release of not one but two new Doom games. Doom Eternal is the flashy AAA sequel with incredible graphics and accurately modeled viscera, of course, but you shouldn't sleep on the other: the first rerelease of Doom 64, an underappreciated entry in the series's history. From a report: Doom 64, as the name suggests, was originally designed for the Nintendo 64. It came out in 1997 and, unlike id Software's previous two Doom titles, it was developed by Midway Games. It was the first Doom game to offer any sort of significant graphical upgrade on the original, had all-new levels, and -- depending on your perspective -- could easily have been considered a "Doom 3" had id not released its own game with that name in 2004. Given its original platform, Doom 64 is also a pretty unusual game. Nintendo strongly promoted "real" 3D titles on its 64-bit console, and Doom 64 is only kind of-sort of one of those. The environments are constructed of polygons, and the textures are filtered. But just like the original Doom, you're still limited to movement on a flat plane without the ability to look around you. Next to something like GoldenEye 007, you could have been forgiven for considering Doom 64 a little archaic at the time.

The PlayStation 2 is celebrating its 20th anniversary as it launched in Japan on March 4, 2000. "It was released in the U.S., Europe and the rest of the world a year later and would go on to become the best-selling console of all time," reports GiveMeSport. From the report: To put this into context, its main rivals at the time, Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's GameCube, would sell 25 million and 22 million consoles worldwide respectively on their first release versus Sony PS2's 155 million! It certainly helped that the PS2 was able to release such memorable games like RockStar Games 'Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas', which sold 17.3 million copies. Other games included 'Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater', which was part of PlayStation's iconic series that was set in the 1960s during the Cold War. Not to mention there was zombie filled 'Resident Evil' franchise and the terrifying 'Silent Hill'.

The success of the PS2 was widely due to Ken Kutaragi. His big idea in the latest round of console battles at the time was to add in a DVD player compatibility with the PS2. DVDs were the latest new format to view movies on at the time and an entry-level price for a DVD Player was $700. The other unique selling point was the backward compatibility; with some exceptions you could play your favorite PlayStation games on the new PS2. Kris Naudus from Engadget writes about how the PlayStation 2 was the first game console she ever bought -- "a big deal at a time when I was only making $135 a week," she. says. Her favorite feature? It could play DVDs.

Kazuhisa Hashimoto, a producer credited with implementing the fabled "Konami Code" that gave players godlike cheats in Contra, Gradius, Castlevania, and other Konami games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, died on Tuesday. He was 61. Polygon reports: Hashimoto was a programmer and producer for the home console port of Gradius, which in 1986 was the first video game to use the Konami Code. Hashimoto put it in the game as an aid for his playtesting, memorably saying that he "obviously couldn't beat it." For unclear reasons, the Konami Code was left in the shipped game, and was later used to playtest other games made by the publisher.

Contra, which launched on the NES in 1988, sold much better than Gradius and is more closely associated with the Konami Code's origins. In it, cheat-code sharers discovered video gaming's Charm of Making -- up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start! -- and were blessed with 30 lives, absolutely critical to a super-tough one-hit-kill side-scroller like Contra. Nostalgia for the Konami Code, if not gratitude for its usefulness to many difficult games of the day, led to its inclusion in numerous other works. A Wikipedia entry on the code counts more than 100 Konami games with the cheat or some version of it inside them. Another 22 games made by other publishers included the code as a tribute, often revealing an Easter egg or secret message. It has also shown up elsewhere in popular culture, most recently in Google Stadia's website (and on its controller), and as a pastime Easter egg in Fortnite in October.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney opened a game event in Las Vegas today with a call to make the industry more open and liberate it from the monopolistic practices of platform owners such as Google and Apple. From a report: In a talk about his vision for games in the next decade, Sweeney alternated between criticizing all of the big players in the game industry to criticizing specific players with examples of how their behavior isn't good for consumers or for competition. [...] Sweeney called Android a "fake open system" for putting up barriers in front of users when Epic Games wanted to enable players to sideload Fortnite directly from the Epic Games site, rather than through the Google Play store. Sweeney said that Google put up "scary" pop-ups in front of users about the risks of sideloading (viruses, malware) and other steps that users had to engage in order to get Fortnite on Android. Epic also had in "tough discussions" with Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to make Fortnite available as a crossplay title (meaning you can play against people on other systems, and your progress, items, and so on are available regardless of device) across the platforms.

One of the principles that Sweeney argued for was that "gamers should be free to engage in any game with their friends anyplace they want without any unnecessary friction." He said that the platforms have been too balkanized, and Microsoft lost a whole decade of progress as it tried and failed to make its Windows marketplace more like Apple's closed system. Microsoft has since backed off on that. Gamers and game vendors should be "free of lockdown." He drew a comparison to Visa and Mastercard and the global credit card payment system, where vendors charge 2.5% to 3.5% fees for transactions, while store vendors such as Steam, Apple, and Google charge 30%. He said the global payments industry is proof that highly profitable companies can arise from just taking the 2.5% to 3.5% cut.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A 21-year-old California man has pleaded guilty to hacking Nintendo's servers multiple times since 2016, using phishing techniques to gain early access to information about the company's plans. Ryan S. Hernandez, who went by RyanRocks online, worked with an unnamed associate to phish employee login credentials for proprietary Nintendo servers, according to an indictment filed in Washington state federal court in December and unsealed over the weekend. Hernandez used that unauthorized access to "download thousands of files, including proprietary developer tools and non-public information" about upcoming Nintendo products and "access pirated and unreleased video games."

That information (and discussion of Nintendo's internal server vulnerabilities) was leaked to the public via Twitter, Discord, and a chat room called "Ryan's Underground Hangout," prosecutors said. At one point, "RyanRocks" drew at least a little infamy in the Nintendo hacking community for allegedly leaking a Nintendo Software Development Kit that had a piece of hidden Remote Access Tool malware added to it. FBI agents confronted Hernandez about his hacking in 2017, according to a prosecution press release, and secured a promise from Hernandez "to stop any further malicious activity." But the hacking continued in 2018 and 2019, according to the indictment, until a June 2019 FBI raid that obtained hard drives with thousands of proprietary Nintendo files. The seized hard drives also included sexually explicit images of minors in a folder labeled "BAD STUFF," according to prosecutors. Hernandez has agreed to pay almost $260,000 to Nintendo as part of a plea agreement. Prosecutors are recommending a jail term of three years for Hernandez's crimes when sentencing is decided in April.

Nintendo says the Switch has hit 52.5 million sales in its lifetime, already surpassing that of the SNES. From a report: In becoming the company's fifth best-selling console of all-time, the Switch has helped to boost Nintendo -- the company reported a $2.75 billion operating profit, up from the previously predicted $2.38 billion. Previous forecasts had Switch sales for the fiscal year, ending March 31, at 18 million. That number has now jumped to 19.5 million. And, 10.8 million of those were sold during the holiday season alone, leading to a 22.5 percent increase by December of the previous year.

A European court has sided with Nintendo's ongoing practice to not let users cancel digital preorders. The Verge reports: According to Norwegian gaming site PressFire, the consumer authorities of Norway and Germany sued Nintendo for not letting users cancel digital preorders purchased from the eShop. The case went to court at the end of last year. This week, the court ruled in favor of Nintendo, meaning it can continue the practice for now. PressFire reports that the German consumer authority has appealed the ruling.

When the Norwegian Consumer Council first formally criticized Nintendo's policy in 2018, it said that Nintendo's policy conflicts with the EU's Consumer Rights Directive, which requires that consumers must be able to cancel online purchases and receive refunds. Nintendo's no-refunds policy is also in place for the U.S. -- in fact, Nintendo states that all sales of digital purchases on the Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch are final -- and Nintendo is the only console maker that doesn't let customers cancel a digital preorder, which the Norwegian Consumer Council noted in its 2018 complaint.

After almost seven years, Nintendo has won a patent case that involved the original Wii. On Tuesday, the company announced that a federal court in Dallas ruled in its favor against iLife Technologies, overturning an earlier 2017 decision that would have forced Nintendo to pay out $10.1 million in damages. Engadget reports: The original suit, which was brought against Nintendo of America in 2013, alleged that the company used iLife's technology to create the Wii's motion-sensing controller. The patent that was at the center of the case described a technology designed to detect when a person falls and monitor babies for symptoms of sudden infant death syndrome. iLife had initially sought $144 million in total damages and an injunction against Nintendo. In this latest ruling, however, the court decided that iLife's claim wasn't specific enough.

Long-time Slashdot reader kackle writes: If you cut your teeth on 8-bit computers during their explosion into the mainstream beginning in the 1970s, you were likely aware of and/or influenced by the work of electrical engineer Charles "Chuck" Peddle, who died this week.

The general public may not know his name today, but his efforts had a big impact on the cost and availability of computing to the average person at the beginning of the personal computer era.
"More than any other person, Chuck Peddle deserves to be called the founder of the personal computer industry," Byte magazine wrote back in 1982. While working at Motorola in the 1970s, management had told Peddle to abandon efforts to build an ultra low price microprocessor -- but instead he'd joined MOS Technology, working on the team that designed their influential $25 650x processors, remembers the Computer History Museum. "The most famous member of the 650x series was the 6502, which was subsequently used in very many microcomputer devices (four well-known examples from the consumer market being the Apple II, the Commodore VIC-20, the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES, the ATARI 8-bit computers and the BBC Micro from Acorn Computers)."

in 2014 Peddle recorded a four-hour oral history with the museum, and earlier this year Peddle spoke at the University of Maine, where he'd earned an engineering physics degree 60 years earlier.

This week in an online remembrance, engineer David Gray remembers "the joy of creating, inventing and innovating with Chuck on and off over a forty six (46) year period... I am missing your indomitable spirit as I write."

Activision Blizzard, reeling from harsh reactions after it punished a tournament player for backing Hong Kong's anti-Beijing protesters, canceled a New York launch event for an edition of its Overwatch game. From a report: The event, scheduled for Wednesday at Nintendo's store in Rockefeller Center, was planned to support the release of Overwatch: Legendary Edition for the Nintendo Switch portable game machine. Nintendo tweeted Tuesday that Blizzard had canceled the promotion. Blizzard, which didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, has been struggling to contain a backlash after it punished the gamer Chung Ng Wai, known as Blitzchung. The player wore a gas mask and chanted a pro-Hong Kong slogan in a post-tournament interview, leading Blizzard to ban him from events for a year and strip him of $10,000 in prize money.

Developer Riley Testut is launching an alternative to Apple's App Store, called AltStore, that theoretically lets you "push the boundaries" of iOS without either jailbreaking or worrying that Apple will pull access. Engadget reports: AltStore works by fooling your device into believing that you're a developer sideloading test apps. It uses an app on your Mac or Windows PC to re-sign apps every seven days, using iTunes' WiFi syncing framework to reinstall them on your device before they expire. You only need a free Apple ID (a throwaway will do) to install apps that Apple would never allow, such as Testut's Delta emulator for Nintendo consoles.

In theory, there's not much Apple can do to easily shut things down. It could take down individual accounts, but you could just create another Apple ID if needed. Also, iOS only looks for an excessive number of app provisioning profiles, not the number of apps you have installed. So long as AltStore manages those profiles, Apple doesn't know if you're running one app or twenty. Testut told The Verge that measures to block AltStore would break key functionality for developers or iTunes syncing. AltStore is available in preview form now, with a formal launch due on September 28th. "People who back Testut's Patreon will also have the option to install almost any app, not just those in the store," the report adds.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A fortnight ago, Twitter user @drip133 asked a seemingly innocent question above a photo of the joypad: "Do you say 'x' or 'cross' button?" There were hundreds of contradictory responses, which became increasingly furious as the week wore on. Some insisted that because the other buttons are named after shapes -- Triangle, Square and Circle -- logically, the "X" button must be called "Cross"; others pointed out that as 'X' was the common usage, this was the only acceptable pronunciation. [...] Then, in a shock move, Sony itself became involved. On 5 September, the official Twitter feed of PlayStation UK stated: "Triangle. Circle. Cross. Square. If Cross is called X (it's not), then what are you calling Circle?" The scrap is a rare event in the world of video games as console manufacturers usually name buttons after numbers, unambiguous letters of the alphabet or colours. The groundbreaking Nintendo Entertainment System pad, for example, went with A, B, while the SNES added X and Y (a configuration also used by Sega and Microsoft), and in this context, it's clear that "X" is X.

Years ago, in an interview with the now defunct video game website 1UP, Sony designer Teiyu Goto explained how the buttons came to be named: "We wanted something simple to remember, which is why we went with icons or symbols, and I came up with the triangle-circle-X-square combination immediately afterward. I gave each symbol a meaning and a colour. The triangle refers to viewpoint; I had it represent one's head or direction and made it green. Square refers to a piece of paper; I had it represent menus or documents and made it pink. The circle and X represent 'yes' or 'no' decision-making and I made them red and blue respectively." Sadly, this doesn't really help because in the quote he has characterised the "X" button with an "X" symbol and who knows whether that was actually him or the journalist who wrote the piece.

dvda247 writes: Since there's the Nintendo Switch and previously there was the Sony PSP (Playstation Portable), should Microsoft make an Xbox Phone? There are already 'gaming phones' like the ASUS ROG Phone 2, but should Microsoft jump back into the smartphone game to make a phone running Android that is focused primarily on playing Xbox One games? Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Play Anywhere would be huge selling points to make an Xbox Phone. What are your thoughts?

An anonymous reader quotes Kotaku Australia: Spurred on by the recent discussions of video games and violence, and spurred on by the emotional and often downbeat tone of that discussion, a user on Twitter posted a simple thought exercise. Rather than talking about the misery and pain of the week, what if people shared all the times Nintendo games changed lives instead?

Unsurprisingly, the tweet went viral with over 22,000 retweets and 31,200 likes, prompting a trending discussion where people began sharing tales of how Nintendo games have served as a force for good.... Users began retelling stories of the first times they shared a Nintendo game with their parents. Others spoke about times how Nintendo games helped them while they were being bullied at school, difficult situations at home, or just being able to connect with people over a shared interest.
The responses included game players with autism or depression, with other gamers sharing stories about bonding with a parent, getting inspired to pursue a career, or meeting friends or future spouses in online games.

Any Slashdot readers want to share their own thoughts on whether videogames are "a force for good"?

All three major console manufacturers -- Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony -- have agreed to require games with paid loot boxes to include the chances of winning randomized in-game items from them, the Entertainment Software Association announced Wednesday. From a report: Michael Warnecke, the ESA's chief counsel of tech policy, made the announcement during a workshop on loot boxes hosted by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. "I'm pleased to announce this morning that Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony have indicated to ESA a commitment to new platform policies with respect to the use of paid loot boxes in games that are developed for their platforms," Warnecke said. "Specifically, this would apply to new games and game updates that add loot box features, and it would require the disclosure of the relative rarity or probabilities of obtaining randomized virtual items in games that are available on their platforms." Warnecke said that in addition to the major console manufacturers, "many of the leading video game publishers" who are members of the ESA, the trade body that represents the gaming industry, will "implement a similar approach."

According to a recent financial report from Sony, the PlayStation 4 has become the fastest home console to reach 100 million sales. Geek.com reports: The 100 million mark is an impressive milestone for any console no matter how long it takes to reach it. Sony previous hit it with the original PlayStation and set the total sales record with the PlayStation 2's 155 million sales. Meanwhile, Nintendo also achieved this with the original Wii, the Game Boy line of handhelds, and the 154 million sales of the Nintendo DS. But after failing to hit the target with the beleaguered (albeit still successful) PlayStation 3, Sony has bounced back with the PlayStation 4. And since the PS4 has only been on the market for five years and seven months, it beat the record two months earlier than the previous fastest seller the PS2.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Doom, there's now mobile versions in the Google Play Store, reports Android Police, "and since this is a 25th-anniversary release, it includes the fourth expansion Thy Flesh Consumed. It's the complete package folks, and it's finally available on Android as an official release."

And in addition, three Doom re-releases are now available for the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, reports the Verge -- though there was one little glitch: Bethesda says it'll get rid of the strange requirement that players must log into an online account before they play the newly re-released versions of Doom, Doom II, and Doom 3, which went live yesterday. Players quickly criticized Bethesda for the seemingly ridiculous limitation -- the first of these games was released more than 25 years ago, at a time when there was obviously no internet requirement. The online login will be made optional in a coming update, Bethesda said today.
The re-releases were part of QuakeCon 2019, reports IGN, noting that Bethesda also showcased Doom Eternal's multiplayer, "revealing new details about the unique 1v2 Battle Mode."

Forbes hails the re-releases as "id Software's fast-paced, ultra-violent...classic shooters," adding that "It appears the re-releases are actually Unity remakes, though whether much has changed beyond resolution support remains to be seen." But they may also have some other minor differences, Engadget reports: There have been a few other complaints as well, such as the addition of copy protection, graphical changes (such as filtering that softens those 1993-era graphics) and apparent music tempo slowdowns on the Switch. That's not including the removal of downloads for the old PS3 and Xbox 360 versions. It's not a fiasco, but these clearly weren't the straightforward ports some were expecting.

It was the best-selling game of June, with IGN calling it "the most accessible game design tool ever created, and that core is just one part of a greater whole..."

Since its launch three weeks ago, fans have already built over 2 million custom stages, NPR notes -- but the real news is that Super Mario Maker 2 finally represents a shift in Nintendo's attitude towards its fan community: It's Nintendo's reliance on the creative spirit of these dedicated players that makes the Super Mario Maker series such a quietly radical property within the Nintendo canon... By loosening its grip on a beloved property and tossing the keys to the player community, Nintendo feeds into the fan-obsessive tendencies they've previously refused. With the Super Mario Maker series, Nintendo acknowledges the history of competitive speedrunning, tournament play, and even the masochistic fan games that have made their games visible and interesting in an entirely different way. It's the rare Nintendo game that is depending on those players, creators, and spectators to keep it alive. Super Mario Maker 2 has only been out for a few weeks, but already we've seen how the game's deceptively complex course editor has led to the community making some astounding levels...

Nintendo has always been old-school in the way they rely on offline experiences, downplaying the kind of online communities that other developers prioritize. Ironically, it is that indifference that has made fan communities formed around Nintendo games feel singular and special -- they're smaller, more intimate, and regulated by the players themselves. With the Super Mario Maker franchise, Nintendo finally acknowledges the power and influence of its most obsessive fans -- by creating something that couldn't thrive without them.
IGN argues that "it's astonishing how incredibly well it's all held together in one cohesive package... It does nearly everything better than its already excellent predecessor, introducing some incredible new ideas, level styles, building items, and so much more - all while maintaining the charm of Mario games we know and love."

And Slashdot reader omfglearntoplay writes "If you like old games from the 1980s, this is your game."

This August, Nintendo is releasing a new Switch model with a longer battery life. It will be priced the same as the current model and, aside from the improved battery, feature the same specs. From a report: The new model's battery life will last between 4.5 and 9 hours, depending on the game. For Breath of the Wild, for example, the battery life will last for an estimated 5.5 hours. In comparison, the current model has a battery life that's between 2.5 and 6.5 hours, depending on the game. Once again, for Breath of the Wild, the battery life is 3 hours.